Tag Archives: bands

Wow, Austin took our breath away, I think we’re just about recovered. So much awesome stuff happened that we thought we’d better write them all down and share with you. If you were at SXSW, we’d love to hear your stories too.

First up… bands. So many bands and so much good music. And it wasn’t just about blagging our way into the Foo Fighters VIP to catch Dave Grohl play through the new album, it was also about the 2000+ plus acts that all made their way to Austin to showcase at the official (and unofficial) parties. We did our research and found that over 400 of these bands had SoundCloud accounts, so we got busy asking them to add their music to Paper Garden’sSXSW Showcase group. Listen to the results…

But it wasn’t just music we were looking forward to. It was also the SXSW sounds. We reached out via Twitter to ask for willing SXSW Sound Ambassadors to fill up our interactive sound map of Austin. Our Sound Ambassadors (and one VC) managed to capture everything from elevator pitches, to interviews, to street noise, to buskers, to drunken conversations in bars. Go check it all out on the map.

We also teamed up with Billboard and Blue Microphones who used our map widgets to create their own special sound maps to great effect! If you’d like to do something similar then get in touch.

Last but not least I wanted to leave you with a few bonus tracks that involve our very own Alexander Ljung. First up go and check out one of many podcasts of panel recordings that are being uploaded by Hittin Interactive, one of which is actually one of Alex’s panels entitled ‘Selling Services To Musicians‘.

And to finish off check out this spontaneous remix of Alex talking about Austin’s world famous barbecue.

You play in a band, have heard about SoundCloud but are not yet sure how it can help you? No problem – let’s take a closer look and dive into the different things you can do. We hope you’ll join and make SoundCloud your hub on the web, the control room for your tracks.

In short:

Upload your songs to your SoundCloud account, easily bring your tracks to where your fans are and have all the statistics around plays and downloads in one place.

In detail:

1. Player Widgets – Your tracks, well in shape.

We’re sure you put a lot of thought and energy into creating beautiful artwork for your songs and albums and obviously they deserve the best players available out there. Good thing we’ve got ‘em. We want to help you get the most out of your artwork when embedding your tracks to your blog, website or social profiles.

In addition to our classic waveform player, our Premium accounts come with two extra widget players: the artwork and minimal player. For artists and bands working with albums, we recommend using the artwork player. Here’s an example of a nice artwork player integration to a band website:

On the left, when you mouse-over the player, you see a preview of the player navigation: different options on the top and the album navigation including the waveform at the bottom of the player. Pretty cool: your album art and a big play button. Perfect for your discography page on your website.

RootMusic’s BandPage app for Facebook has quickly become one of the most popular apps used by the SoundCloud community. Now there’s finally a way for bands to have all their info on one Facebook page: tracks powered by SoundCloud, tour dates, photos, your bands’ biography and wall posts. For fans, browsing your BandPage is a breeze as they can continue to listen to the streamed tracks while clicking through the page.

3. Extensions – Push to where your fans are

Back in 1986, Salt-N-Peppa taught us to ‘push it, push it real good’. We took them at their word and added a nifty way for you to automatically push newly uploaded tracks and sets to your other social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. This saves you a lot of time when updating your different profiles and sends your new material straight into your fans’ timelines where they can discuss your latest creations. Plus, you can customize the text of the messages pushed to catch your fans’ attention:

Fans, on the other hand, can also use the same extensions to push the players of tracks they favorite on SoundCloud straight to their social network profiles (Facebook pictured on the left), thus helping you to promote your songs to their friends. Win-win, as they say in the biz.

4. Mobile Roadie – Create your own iPhone or Android app

Mobile apps are hot, there’s no doubt about that.

Our partners at Mobile Roadie have built a framework and an easy-to-update content management system enabling you to create your own personalized iPhone and Android app in no time. Developing an individual app from scratch takes a lot of time, money and expertise. With Mobile Roadie, you sign up, get access to the platform, import your SoundCloud tracks, customize the app here and there and Mobile Roadie will submit your app to the app store in no time.

Artists and bands already using Mobile Roadie: Madonna, As I Lay Dying, The Doors, Black Lips and many many more.

5. Flavors.me – Speaking of websites. Need one?

Flavors.me allows you to create an elegant & dynamic website and aggregate your different profiles from around the web. Link up your Facebook page, Twitter, Flickr or SoundCloud accounts – you name it. You’ll have everything in one place on a page you can fully customize: background picture, fonts, size. Track the traffic statistics and learn about your visitors and to top that: if you already have an own domain, you can use it or buy a custom domain right when signing up with a Flavors account. Read more about the latest Flavors.me developments in a recent blog post about their current release.

Example? Here you go:

More features and tips that can help your band:

Buy Links: via your track/set settings, add a link to any offline/online store to point people to where you’re selling your tracks